Monday, March 21, 2011

While blog surfing one day, I came upon this blog post with a tutorial for this totally cute ruffle dress. It was supposed to be a Hanna Andersson “knock-off”. I’d never seen the Hanna Andersson dress, but the dress she made was super-cute, and it looked pretty easy to do. The dress requires a raglan sleeve t-shirt pattern. I didn’t have such a pattern, but I thought it would be fairly easy to make one by tracing one of my son’s old t-shirts.

As soon as I sewed on the first ruffle, I knew this dress would be cute. There’s something about ruffles that makes any outfit so adorable.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

My son is a skinny guy. It’s really hard to find pants that fit him. He’s 3.5 and until recently was still wearing 2T pants, because the 3T would just fall off him. He’d walk around with the Marky Mark look, and Marky Mark is so 1990s. The 2T pants, though, started get so short, they were looking like flood pants. It was time to let them go. Then, I realized, I have a sewing machine. I could fix those 3T pants so the waist is a little smaller. These are just his sweatpants he wears to preschool and the park, so nothing fancy. These are the kind of pants where the elastic is sewn into the pants, so I couldn’t just open up the waistband and shorten the elastic. So, I ended up sewing both sides of the waistband to make it a little smaller. Not the most attractive look, but I figure the waistband would be covered by his shirts. And, more importantly, no more Marky Mark look!

I did about 10 of these in one night. Whew!

To think, I used to take my pants to the tailor to be hemmed, even my yoga pants.

Monday, March 14, 2011

So, while I was out grocery shopping, I somehow ended up at Joann Fabrics. They happened to have some cute spring fabrics in the store, and a few of these fabrics somehow ended in my shopping cart. I also somehow happened to have these coupons in my purse. And somehow these fabrics are now in my house.

Funny how that happens.

As a side note, the lady who cut the fabric for me told me that the white embroidered fabric reminded her of her grandmother. In a good way, I hope.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

I think babies in rompers are so cute. When my son was around 12 months, I had about a million of them for him.

While wandering around at the mall, I found this romper for the baby girl:

It’s super-cute in person, but the price tag is not so cute. And it wasn’t even part of whatever sale was going on in the store. I went back and forth on whether I should attempt to make it. I kept looking at it, thinking, It’s just shorts and a top sewn together, but then it had all these details, and I’d have to figure out my own pattern. I kept telling myself it would be more time-consuming than it was worth. But, on the other hand, there are some intangibles about making it that might be worth the time, like what about the pride of having made something for my child to wear? Or what about showing those big store chains that they don’t have the power over me, they can keep their $30 romper, thankyouverymuch. For those reasons, along with my overachiever tendencies, I dove right in.

welcome!

As a mom of two, I spend most of my time and energy taking care of (and worrying about) my kids. Motherhood has been fulfilling in ways I could never have imagined, but I also crave an outlet for my creative energy. (Other than coming up with creative ways to convince a three-year-old to eat his dinner, that is.) So, after the kids are in bed, in my house, you can often hear the purr of the sewing machine and NPR podcasting on the computer, as something new takes form.